Re: NTSB preliminary report on 2011 BNSF Red Oak, IA, collision
Author: OPRRMS
Date: 04-25-2012 - 12:54
Chris Walker Wrote:
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> On these new type locomotives on US railroads are
> there any vigilance devices requiring the crew to
> respond to a timer or such?
I can't speak to what BNSF equips its units with, and in all honesty, I haven't read the complete NTSB report yet so I don't know what's memtioned in it about this, but many railroads have a Positive Reset Alerter on their locomotive control stands that must be manually reset by the engineer at varying intervals. Failure to reset the alerter results in the locomotive making a Penalty brake application, thus stopping the train. Problem is, if the engineer is in a state of half-sleep, he or she can have a routine reflex response to press the reset button each time the alarm goes off without actually waking up.